In ever more secular Europe, something like piety suffuses the climate-change debate. Human acts that contribute to global warming are not just bad habits. To many Europeans, they are sins of carbon excess (and oil-addicted America looks like a greenhouse-gas glutton, dragging the planet to perdition).rnIn the couple of years since climate change forced its way to the top of the European Union's agenda, this hairshirt mood has kept things politically simple for policymakers. In 2007 eu leaders set ambitious targets for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions by 20% by 2020. Meeting those targets will be painful and expensive, but for now public opinion claims to be ready to drop bad habits. Almost eight in ten Europeans told a Eurobarometer poll last year that they thought they would need to change their energy consumption behaviour in the next decade.
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